The Vampire Diaries Review

Last Thursday The CW premiered it's newest show The Vampire Diaries.

As the name suggests it involves both vampires and diaries. The Vampire Diaries takes place in a small Virginia Town known as Mystic Falls that seems be suffering from an angst epidemic. The Main Character is a girl names Elena who recently lost her parents in a car crash, is currently dealing with a little brother who is swiftly becoming a drug addict, and is about to be caught in a tragic and dangerous love triangle with vampire brothers. You heard me right vampire Brothers one brother is good the other one is evil, and both are interested in Elena because she looks exactly like a girl they used to know.

The show is based on "The Vampire Diaries" series by LJ Smith. The "Vampire Diaries" series was written at least a good decade before Twilight, but somehow the show comes off looking like a weaker version of Twilight. This is probably due to the fact that the Twilight movie is better written and acted then this show, and yes I too am shocked that I just wrote that sentence. There were many changes made in the story as "The Vampire Diaries" made the transition from book to television, I think most of them were for the better.

In the book Elena is the most popular girl at school who has an army of minions who do her bidding, she is blond, has just returned from a trip of France, seems considerably less upset about her parents, and is obsessed with getting Stefan Salvatore. The TV series made Elena a little more like Bella Swan; a smart, well liked brunette girl, who is often quite awkward. Instead of Elena strongly pursuing Stefan and Stefan resisting her advances like the brooding responsible vampire he is; they meet and get to know each other in a fairly normal way.

The acting in the series is pretty weak but passable. The only characters that really stood out in their performance were Katerina Graham who played Elena's best friend Bonnie, and Ian Somerhalder (Better known as Boone on Lost) who clearly enjoyed playing an over the top villain Damon Salvatore, the rest were very generic in their performance.

The writing in the series isn't particularly strong either, yet I have hopes that it will improve as the series moves along. The first episode had to establish a lot about the series and sometimes things got a bit mixed up. Sometimes it felt like the series ran from one character to the next establishing why each was angsty, as opposed to following the real plot line of love and murder and letting the angst develop in it's own time. Also, the way it was shown on camera it wasn't clear if Damon had the ability to turn into a raven, or if he just sends a random raven around to freak people out. I also found the Dear Diary format to be a bit annoying and overplayed, hopefully this aspect will fade away or be used more effectively as the story progresses. Hopefully the next episode will have a little more action and a little less angst.

I suppose the bottom line is "The Vampire Diaries" is an ok show. It's nothing spectacular but I have decidedly seen worse. Vampires are a very popular genre right now so you can expect this show to hang around till at least the end of the season. Lets hope the acting and writing tighten up a bit by then.